Features

Note that the dialog only inserts the text, it doesn't send the comment, nor does it flag anything; this is so that you can check the text before posting!

Customize the texts

Simply double click on a comment text or description in order to customize it. Hit the 'reset' button if you screw up. This customization is currently per-site. Note that the "Welcome to $SITENAME$" text is automagically inserted if the user is 'new' (member for less than a week), so you don't need to add that to your custom text (but you can if you want to, see '9' below).

If you need more/less than the default 6 comments, just carry on reading...

Quick user info

The dialog also includes a mini-summary of the user's activity (because if they haven't been back in months, there's no point writing them a comment).

Automatic notification of new versions

The script will also notify you if a newer version is created.

Import/export of custom comments

This helps with transferring custom comments between sites. The export/import 'format' is also conveniently presented as markdown, so you can post it in an answer below, and let others benefit from your words of wisdom.

Note that you can also use the Import to create an arbitrary number of comments (the default is 6). If there are too many, you can use the show/hide desc link to gain a bit of space.

Remote source for comments

If you get bored with copy/pasting your comments between sites and/or computers, you can use the 'remote' button to define a remote source for your comment texts. See here for more details.

Differentiated comments for questions/answers

If you prefix your comment title with [Q], it will be only displayed for questions ([A] for answers). Non-prefixed comments are displayed for both.

[type here], [username] & [OP] (& $MYUSERID$)

If the text [type here] is included in a comment, it will be automatically selected for completion when inserted. [username] will be replaced with the user's name (or just 'user' if nothing was found), and [OP] with the original poster's name (if found, else 'OP'). Also, $MYUSERID$ will be replaced with your user id for the current site.

Customise welcome message

The default message is "Welcome to $SITENAME$" - which is shown for any 1-week-old users. By clicking on the 'welcome' link at the bottom of the popup, you can opt to change this message, or leave it empty to show no messages at all. You can also 'force' the message for older users on a one-off basis. This is per-site.

For advanced users, as a userscript (for some browsers this will require a user script manage such as Tampermonkey for Chrome or Greasemonkey for FireFox)

You may also download the code and run the build process yourself to generate the userscript version as well as Chrome, Firefox and Opera extensions that you can install locally if you'd rather not use the store versions.

54 Answers
54

The work on making this a full-blown Github based project originally outlined in this answer is now complete. All further feature requests and bug reports should be directed at the Github issue tracker.

I have created a full blown Github repo here. The master branch is the latest from benjol's gist and all commit history is included. The master branch can be installed from this alternate location as a userscript using this url. This should make it easier for others to fork and send pull requests with changes back upstream.

I have created branches that include all the gists that had been forked off of this and merged in those commits. Most of these are behind master and would need rebasing, but at least no work will be lost in the shuffle and this should make it easier to review and integrate their work.

I have created a fork of my own and selectively merged in changes from the branch that came from Izzy's work in gist. His work includes changes so that custom comments are stored and retrieved per-site, but it also included his default comments hard coded in. I cherry-picked just the functional stuff and made a few tweaks. I have tentatively called this 1.4.0-beta1 and can be installed as a userscript from this link. There are some known bugs still but when it's ready I'll submit a pull request and maybe these can be merged into master.

This was just leg work to get everything cleaned up and manageable using a full repo instead of gists which were gitting out of hand.

'Remote' comment source

You can now define an external source for your comments, and 'import' them. This means that you don't have to manually copy comments from site to site and PC to PC.

To do this, you click on the 'remote' link; enter the url for your data source; then click on 'get now'.

The data source must be formatted as jsonp. There is a new 'jsonp' link in the import/export dialog which will create the appropriate jsonp from your existing comments.

It is also possible to automatically invoke it every time you open the dialog, by selecting the auto-get checkbox. I'm interested in feedback on this.

'Broadcasts'

I've added a function to be able to 'broadcast' messages without changing the code. The intended use for this will be to ask for feedback on proposed future changes.
Taken this off-line again, it was not completely thought-through and you had to dismiss on every site... (sigh, no global storage)

@jrg, actually, don't. There seem to be problems with parallel ajax queries here. While trying the next version I found the comments sometimes just disappear and never come back.
–
BenjolMay 23 '12 at 12:21

###Comment as answer
__This is not a forum. Please only use the 'Post Your Answer' button if you can answer the asker's question; <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment">post a comment</a> otherwise.__ We require some <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation">reputation</a> before you can comment others' posts to prevent abuse; why don't you try and get some by <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/unanswered">answering a question?</a>
###Question as answer
__This is not a forum. If you have a different question from the asker's, please use the <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/ask">Ask Question</a> button__ instead. You don't even have to login!
###Upvote as Answer
__This is not a forum. If you wish to thank somebody, you should <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/privileges/vote-up">vote him up</a>.__ We require a little bit of <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation">reputation</a> before you can do that to prevent abuse; why don't you get some by <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/unanswered">answering a question?</a>
###Not a Real Question
This is not a forum; __this is a questions and answer site, and I'm afraid your post isn't really a question, because <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/">real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions</a>.__ <a href="http://gaming.stackexchange.com/faq">Please read the FAQ for more information.</a>

I've added an import/export function which will make pasting setups like this easier, and also allow you to copy between sites (and/or browsers). I'm starting to like your list more than my own :)
–
BenjolMar 4 '11 at 10:29

This has been implemented by Benjol!

Tom, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I'll forgive you suggesting people remove my script! :) Not sure if I'll have time to look at this today, but I'll work through your modifications and see whether/how I might integrate them. I think it would be interesting if you could 'export' your comments and paste them here, like @badp did.
–
BenjolMar 7 '11 at 7:19

2

@TomWij, V1.0.8 integrates all your modifications (except that I just hide userinfo if I can't find any).
–
BenjolMar 17 '11 at 13:30

Can comment text please be collapsed/hidden by default and only expanded for the currently chosen option? This would work kind of like the 'more info' link in the faq which pops out when you click it. (My dialog is getting pretty big now and this would really help!)

Implementation thoughts: See my answer for a local storage based extension. Use a new syntax (eg. ##) that when read is stored as a comment with description "header", then when reading such comment you could embed all subsequent non-header comments and easily have expandable groups.
–
Tom WijsmanMar 4 '11 at 18:19

I see a couple of commentshere suggesting that Benjol is thinking of making the Welcome message configurable.

This is a formal request for that feature.

On Skeptics.SE, we have a meta-post which is a Welcome to New Users FAQ, and explains some of the ways Skeptics.SE differs from other Stack Exchanges. I have experimentally forked this code, just to make the Welcome message include a link to this meta-post.

Unfortunately, my JavaScript skills are too dodgy to make it customisable and offer it back to you as a patch. (The customisation strikes me as particularly tricky for the troublesome few that moderate multiple Stack Exchanges.)

Suggested presentation:

This is only a suggestion - incorporate it into the existing options file. It is a bit ugly, but I think better than having a whole separate config system.

~~~ This is comment text. This line represents the default.
Welcome, my dearest new friend, to $SITENAME.
~~~[skeptics] Using the same 'restriction' notations as [Q] and [A], this overrides the default for one site.
[Welcome to Skeptics](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users)!

An alternative would be to put it all on one line, but then the [qualifier] notation would conflict with the [link]() notation.

Small bug: I haven't figured out at which point this happens exactly, but the script seems to be over-enthusiastic adding the "Welcome" prefix:

Welcome to $SITENAME$! Welcome to $SITENAME$! Welcome to $SITENAME$! The code you show is vulnerable to SQL injection. Use the proper sanitation method of your library (like mysql_real_escape_string() for the classic mysql library), or switch to PDO and prepared statements.

Unless you already know what causes this, I'll keep an eye on it and report back.

Can you add multiple pages of comments? Currently if you have a lot of auto comments, you have to scroll to see them, but it would be nice to be able to click next and previous to see lists of about 5 comments.

Also, the "see through" feature is cool, but it should be activated by a click, instead of on mouse over.

Request: I see a lot of newbies post a comment saying "Thanks this worked perfect for me. It's exactly what I need" on an answer to their question, yet they do not mark the answer as accepted. [username] plugs in the username of the answerer when posting on an answer, but it would be helpful to also include an [OPusername] (or something to that effect) to be able to @ the original question asker on a specific answer.

i.e.

"If this answer is helpful to you, [OPusername], then please consider marking it as the accepted answer so others may more easily find it in the future. This is also a polite way to thank the person answering your question for helping you out."

Here's a bug report.

I've attempted to add the following comment:

[**Please, don't use `mysql_*` functions in new code**](http://bit.ly/phpmsql). They are no longer maintained and the [deprecation process](http://j.mp/Rj2iVR) has begun on it. See the [**red box**](http://j.mp/Te9zIL)? Learn about [*prepared statements*](http://j.mp/T9hLWi) instead, and use [PDO](http://php.net/pdo) or [MySQLi](http://php.net/mysqli) - [this article](http://j.mp/QEx8IB) will help you decide which. If you choose PDO, [here is a good tutorial](http://j.mp/PoWehJ).

[**Please, don't use `mysql_*` functions in new code***](http://bit.ly/phpmsql)*. They are no longer maintained and the [deprecation process](http://j.mp/Rj2iVR) has begun on it. See the [**red box**](http://j.mp/Te9zIL)? Learn about [</a>*<a href="http://j.mp/T9hLWi">prepared statements*](http://j.mp/T9hLWi) instead, and use [PDO](http://php.net/pdo) or [MySQLi](http://php.net/mysqli) - [this article](http://j.mp/QEx8IB) will help you decide which. If you choose PDO, [here is a good tutorial](http://j.mp/PoWehJ).

I suspect the asterisks are derailing it, but why should it care about it anyway? Does it attempt to also fix the comment before saving?

Edit

Seems like the Comment's markdown is parsed into HTML and then remapped to Markdown (why?!). Using's Chrome's console and editing the localStorage directly with

<a href="http://bit.ly/phpmsql"><strong>Please, don't use <code>mysql_*</code> functions in new code</strong></a>. They are no longer maintained and the <a href="http://j.mp/Rj2iVR">deprecation process</a> has begun on it. See the <a href="http://j.mp/Te9zIL"><strong>red box</strong></a>? Learn about <a href="http://j.mp/T9hLWi"><em>prepared statements</em></a> instead, and use <a href="http://php.net/pdo">PDO</a> or <a href="http://php.net/mysqli">MySQLi</a> - <a href="http://j.mp/QEx8IB">this article</a> will help you decide which. If you choose PDO, <a href="http://j.mp/PoWehJ">here is a good tutorial</a>.

to be honest, I can't remember when or why I decided to store it as HTML. Whatever, I've got a pseudo-correction in the works (very pseudo, it skips transformations of * and ** if it finds a backtick in the middle).
–
BenjolOct 25 '12 at 8:54

Can $SITENAME$ be changed for Christianity? Here's what a comment to a new user reads:

Welcome to Christianity! ...

Which sounds pretty creepy. For one thing, most folks who stumble into the site are already affiliated with some faith, which might or might not be Christianity. For another, it sounds like we are a cult or a church. We aren't.

Could $SITENAME$ be changed to "Christianity—Stack Exchange" or "Christianity.SE"?

(I haven't tried to adjust the messages myself, but besides being a bit tedious, it probably would be best to not have new users of the script sending the wrong signals.)

It's less of a concern, but I think it would be odd to see messages like:

Welcome to Christianity—Stack Exchange! Please don't add "thanks" as answers. Invest some time in the site and you will gain sufficient privileges to upvote answers you like, which is the Christianity.SE way of saying thank you.

The same comment on SO reads:

Welcome to Stack Overflow! Please don't add "thanks" as answers. Invest some time in the site and you will gain sufficient privileges to upvote answers you like, which is the Stack Overflow way of saying thank you.

the way I'm thinking about it right now, I think I'd be tempted to make the whole greeting configurable (there are some people who don't like it). I've got a few other changes in the pipes, so this may take a while. In the meantime, if you want to do a personal hack while you're waiting, you need to track down the user-script file, go to line 66, and replace sitename = arr[arr.length - 2]; with sitename = arr[arr.length - 2] + 'your_suffix_here';. After saving, you'll need to F5 in your browser to see the difference...
–
BenjolMar 9 '12 at 6:44

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The same way we press Esc to close the list can we have Enter to add the comment directly instead of the button bellow the list?

My list is getting a bit big and every time I need to select a comment (in a small laptop screen mind you) I need to scroll to the comment, click, scroll down to the end, click to add the comment and the scroll back up on the page to where I was before.

Can this be fixed so Enter adds the comment directly without needing to scroll all the way down?